


Five times Harry and Luna talked, and one time they didn't...

by JynErsoinNYC



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Harry is kind of a dork, Light Angst, Luna is a sweetheart, Lunarry, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Slow Romance, The Deathly Hallows, The Half-Blood Prince - Freeform, the first one is taken from ootp, these are mostly original scenarios
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JynErsoinNYC/pseuds/JynErsoinNYC
Summary: “Are you alright?” Harry asks her again.Luna nods. “Yes, I’m fine. How are you?”
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91





	1. Christmas Ministrations

LUNA

Luna arrives at the DA meeting early. The room is empty except for Harry, who is taking down Christmas decorations.

“Hello, Harry.” 

Harry starts and drops the bauble he’s holding. He spins around. “Luna.”

“Did you put those up?” Luna asks, leaving her bag on the floor and walking over to him. “Why are you taking them down?”

Harry mutters a spell and the stack of decorations at his feet fly into a chest across the room. “A friend put them up…they were a bit distracting.”

“I see,” Luna says, catching sight of a stray bauble with Harry’s grinning face on it.

She smiles. “I think they’re nice.”


	2. June 31st

HARRY

“What was your memory?” Harry finally asks, desperate to know. “For your Patronus charm?”

Sitting across from him, Luna lowers the Quibbler. The bruise on her forehead from the Department of Mysteries is fading.

“About two months after my mom died, I saw a Thestral for the first time. And even though I could only see them because I lost her, I was happy – and I knew she would be, too – that something good came from it.”

Harry stares at her, speechless.

Luna looks out the compartment window, smiles at the sky. “It’s not conventionally happy, but…”

She turns that beam on him, and Harry understands completely. His own smile comes easier than it has for weeks.

The Hogwarts Express rattles on, and a moment later, Luna joins him on his side of the compartment.


	3. All is fair in love and war

LUNA

Luna finds Harry lingering outside the Gryffindor common room. He looks distracted, staring at the ground. “Harry.”

Harry looks up and spots her. “Luna. Hi.”

“I thought you would be celebrating.”

Indeed, there is loud music filtering out from behind the Portrait of the Fat Lady, as well as a rowdy chorus of _Gryffindor! Gryffindor!_

“I was just…I mean, Hermione was just…” Harry shakes his head. “Never mind. Did you come for the party, Luna?”

Luna shakes her head, too. “No. I just wanted to say congratulations to you.”

The distraction in Harry’s eyes disappears. He stares at her.

“And Ginny. And Ron,” Luna adds for some reason.

“Oh,” Harry says, looking away. “Thanks. Ron’s not in there. He’s…somewhere else.”

Luna knows exactly where he is, who he is with. They didn’t even notice her passing them in the stairwell.

“Will you tell Ginny for me?” She says instead. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“I’ll tell her,” Harry nods once.

Luna turns to leave. This has been…awkward, she thinks. Clumsy. Not how she usually finds her time with Harry. And he apparently feels the same, for he calls after her.

“Luna?”

She looks back at him. “Yes?”

“Your lion hat…that was great magic.” He smiles apologetically at her.

Luna mirrors it. “Thank you, Harry.”


	4. Straight-A Students

HARRY

The message from Dumbledore is brief: _Tonight, six o’clock. Astronomy Tower._

Harry swallows. He balls up the little slip of paper and leaves the Gryffindor common room.

He is on his way to the library to tell Hermione and Ron when he finds Professor Snape standing in the doorway of his storeroom, looming over Luna.

“…Miss Lovegood, if you continue to purposefully produce viscous potions that sprout floral vegetation for the amusement of Professor Slughorn during your classes, I’ll have no choice but to interfere.”

Harry stops a few feet away, glowering at Snape.

“Can I assist you, Mister Potter?” Snape murmurs dangerously, lifting narrowed eyes to look at him.

Luna spins around, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Oh! Hi, Harry.”

“Luna, are you alright?” Harry comes to stand beside her.

“You are interrupting a private conversation, Potter,” Snape growls.

Harry turns the dial up on his glare. He opens his mouth to retort, but a first year appears in the corridor. He approaches them on trembling legs, terrified eyes locked on Snape. The three of them look down at him, watching his mouth open and close like a fish out of water.

“Spit it out, boy!” Snape snaps.

The first year jumps. “Professor D-Dumbledore requests to see you, Professor Snape.”

Snape slowly turns back to Harry, a dark meaning behind the dark stare he gives him. He addresses Luna while still looking at Harry. “I trust you’ll consider my warning, Miss Lovegood.”

Then Snape stalks down the corridor, cloak billowing behind him on some impossible wind. The first year scampers away, leaving Harry and Luna standing in an empty corridor.

“Are you alright?” Harry asks her again.

Luna nods. “Yes, I’m fine. How are you?”

Harry suddenly remembers what he’s going to do tonight. He meets her large, silvery eyes. “I don’t think I ever apologized for leaving you alone at the Christmas party.”

Luna blinks, then a small smile curls her mouth. She starts to walk down the corridor, angling herself to face him. Harry matches her slow meander.

“I know you have been distracted, Harry. This year, last year, even before that when we did not know each other yet.”

Luna is as perceptive as always, but even so, it is no excuse for Harry’s behaviour. He opens his mouth to say this, but she reaches out and grabs his hand, just how she did last year.

“I don’t think I ever thanked you for asking me to go.”

Harry tries to memorise the feel of Luna’s hand in his – its cool curves and gentle lines. Tries desperately, but then she lets go.

“Thank you, Harry,” Luna says softly.

Harry wants to take her hand again, but doesn’t. “And I’m sorry, Luna.”

They reach the end of the corridor, and she says to him, quite unexpectedly, “You can make it up to me when you get back.”

He blinks.

“So be safe,” Luna finishes, and Harry watches her disappear around the corner.

Perceptive as always.


	5. Sunset

LUNA

Two tears track their way down her cheeks, stinging the small unhealed cuts that were inflicted by a small sharp knife.

Luna curls up on the spare cot in the tiny attic room, staring out of the round window. She can see Harry sitting in the dunes above Shell Cottage, in front of the gravestone. Hermione and Ron are walking back down the sandy hill, clutched in each other’s arms.

The stinging has long since faded by the time Harry pushes himself up wobblily and makes his way down too.

When the sun is setting behind the tall grasses, casting the attic in bloody orange light, there is a fumbled knock at the door. Luna gets up to open it, expecting Fleur again.

But it’s Harry, awkwardly holding a dinner tray in his hands. They stare at each other for a long, heavy moment. Then Harry is dropping the tray onto a tiny weathered sideboard and Luna is reaching for him and Harry is meeting her halfway and they are grasping each other, entwining themselves together. 

Harry trips over the threshold and then they are in the room proper, holding tight, arms locking each other in place. One bright shadow in the dark red light.

Luna doesn’t know who whispers it first, but they both say it.

“I’m sorry.”

They shift heads so they can see each other.

“What are you sorry for?” Luna asks quietly.

Harry’s green eyes are russet in the sunset. “I’m the reason you were taken there. By them. _To him_.” As though the warmth of the room fuels it, his voice is full of heat.

Luna rests her cheek on his shoulder. “But it was me, Harry. I wrote those articles about you. I’m the reason you were caught.”

Neither of them believe the other, but they don’t argue. They just stand there, pressed together.

“Dobby didn’t deserve this,” Harry mumbles after a while, his anger gone.

Luna peers up at him. His eyes are filled with tears, and it reminds Luna of Dumbledore’s death, of Sirius’, of Cedric’s, even, when she’d seen Harry cry for the first time and thought it was the most heart-breaking thing she’d ever seen.

All this loss. All _his_ loss. Harry didn’t deserve this.

Luna can’t stop her own tears gathering, and she hugs him again, more fiercely, more fiercely than anyone has ever hugged him in his life, and she doesn’t let go. Harry cries for a long time. Luna’s heart breaks over and over, and she hasn’t felt this sad since…well, since someone close to her died too.

When Harry’s breathing has steadied, they sit together on the cot – her shirt wet with his tears – and he tells her about Dobby. About Sirius. About Dumbledore and Cedric. Luna listens to every word, resting against his side, gripping one of his hands.

“It’s my fault,” Harry says afterwards, as though he’s confessing an awful truth.

Luna shakes her head. “No, it isn’t, Harry.”

When he looks at her, Luna can see that he desperately wants to believe her. She gathers their hands between them, pours every ounce of hope and determination and persuasion and love and compassion into an eloquent gaze and a small smile. “No, it isn’t.”

Exuding an almost tangible weariness, Harry finally nods. He takes her hands in his, and they sit there until the sky is dark, the stars are shining, and the moon bathes them in pure, silver light.


	6. And one time they didn't...

HARRY

Harry stands in the middle of the viaduct, staring back at Hogwarts. Parts of the castle – his home – are now in ruins; great chunks missing from the towers, its stone walls scorched with the scars from stray spells and curses. The air is still tinged with smoke, and particles of ash coat his tongue as he inhales.

It was over, and he was alive.

Harry tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He had been the one who was supposed to die. Not Fred. Not Remus and Tonks. Not Lavender. Not even Snape.

That had meant to be Harry’s burden. But here he was.

From this distance he watches Ron and Hermione disappear inside the Great Hall, realising how easily the guilt washes over him when he’s alone. But in their place appears someone else. She steps out into the courtyard and catches sight of him.

There is nothing else to think about as she walks towards him except _her_. The memory of her, mere hours ago, yelling at him to listen. The feeling of her pressed against him under the invisibility cloak. The glaring fact that without her wisdom, her wit, he doesn’t know where any of them would be.

Luna brings with her a light breeze, and it sends the grey haze around them slowly spiralling away. A bright sunrise sets her blonde hair glowing. She comes up beside him and wraps an arm around his waist, tucking herself against him. Harry holds her there.

They stand together for a while, and eventually Luna turns her head up to him like she’s going to say something. Harry looks down at her, waiting.

She doesn’t say anything, though – just searches his eyes before reaching up and pressing gentle lips to his cheek, right by the corner of his mouth. Harry resists the urge to tilt his head and kiss her properly.

For now, this is enough.


End file.
